Nick Cook .nethttp://www.nickcook.net
Nick Cook. 13.7 billion years in the making - not that much better for it.Tue, 11 Dec 2018 22:00:55 +0000en-GBhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.162799814Visiting Auschwitz Birkenau – The Horrors of Yesterdayhttp://www.nickcook.net/visiting-auschwitz-birkenau-the-horrors-of-yesterday/
http://www.nickcook.net/visiting-auschwitz-birkenau-the-horrors-of-yesterday/#commentsSat, 01 Dec 2018 11:21:28 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6405You will have seen photos, you will have seen documentaries, you may have been taught in school. Some people will be compelled to visit here, some feel they must, but perhaps everyone should…

]]>You will have seen photos, you will have seen documentaries, you may have been taught in school. Some people will be compelled to visit here, some feel they must, but perhaps everyone should do so that the horrors of yesterday never again become today. A place where 1.1 million people, mainly European Jews were systematically dehumanised, tortured, experimented on and murdered. Auschwitz was the largest Nazi German concentration camp and death camp. 40 miles west of Krakow, Auschwitz Birkenau is now a UNESCO world heritage site, a museum, a memorial, with a meaning.

Auschwitz gate entrance. Work sets you free.

It’s a museum of two parts, from two of the remaining camps. Our tour guide takes us through Auschwitz 1 camp and it starts with the sign above the gate entrance; ARBEIT MACHT FREI – work sets you free. Horrendous irony that meant exactly the opposite for those who came here, a site where the greatest mass murder in history took place, genocide, the holocaust.

We are reminded that Auschwitz was originally a Polish Army Camp at the village of Oświęcim, the layout, the barrack blocks remind me of my former RAF sites. But what happened within the electrified fences of this concentration camp was state sponsored slave labour, slow death, starvation, shootings, worked to death, hangings, gassing, suicide, torture, disease, destruction and death.

Auschwitz electric fence

It might be difficult to comprehend the sheer scale of the savage destruction as you are guided around but the barrack blocks now house the exhibits, the stories and the material evidence. Zyklon B canisters used to gas people, mounds of shoes, children’s shoes, baby shoes, suitcases, spectacles, human hair. Early on, before the number got too large, the Nazis kept a record at Auschwitz, the walls are lined with photos of those that were murdered by being worked to death, their name, nationality, birth date, deported date, their death date. The faces of Auschwitz.

We’re taken to Block 11, the block used solely to torture, starve, the isolation cells, and where the first attempts to gas using Zyklon B were made. 600 Russian prisoner’s of war and 250 Polish prisoners were crammed into the basement where Zyklon B was released. At 15-20 minutes, not a quick death but an efficient one for Nazi purposes.

We walk past the house where the camp commandant Rudolph Hoss lived, the same house where Rudolph Hoss’s wife stayed after he was back in Germany and which his wife described as paradise while on the other side of the fence was exactly the opposite. And not far from where he was hung in 1947. Just a few metres away, the gas chamber and the crematorium. We get to go in, we look up to see the holes where the Zyklon B was dropped through.

The 2nd part of our tour takes us to Auschwitz camp 2, Birkenau, the death camp, the extermination camp. Birkenau is at the end of the train line, and the very last stop for 900,000 people. Its bleak and barren, the buildings and guard towers punctuate the flat landscape.

Birkenau

It was here where people arrived from all over Europe. Arriving off the cattle train, they walk on to the The Ramp. This is where selection took place. The elderly, the infirm, those under 15 walked with their mother walked straight to the gas chamber. They didn’t know they were going, it was orderly. Once there, they stripped for a shower. A shower that never took place. They were gassed, hundreds at a time. After, the Sonderkommando, were forced to clean up the chamber. shave the hair and remove gold fillings and false teeth.

Today the gas chamber and crematorium buildings remains as they were found, partially destroyed by the retreating SS. Our last stop is Block 25, the block of death where female prisoners deemed unfit for work were kept until they were sent to the gas chamber.

Something to remember as the right wing rhetoric and nationalism that builds up here and across the world where people are rejected by politicians building up walls and fences. Never again.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/visiting-auschwitz-birkenau-the-horrors-of-yesterday/feed/56405Have a Cracking Krakow City Breakhttp://www.nickcook.net/krakow-city-break/
http://www.nickcook.net/krakow-city-break/#commentsTue, 27 Nov 2018 21:00:23 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6403We’re in Poland’s second city spending four days in the quaint, cultural, crazy Krakow for city break. A curious mix of communist, medieval and modern buildings wrapped around an old town square.…

]]>We’re in Poland’s second city spending four days in the quaint, cultural, crazy Krakow for city break. A curious mix of communist, medieval and modern buildings wrapped around an old town square. It’s hard to miss, old town is dominated by St Mary’s Basilica where the bugle calls out each hour and the old town splays out from the Cloth Hall to old streets.

We had a hotel (Hotel Maksymilian) that was a 7 minute stroll from the centre than we then explored the city from. We’ve had to dress for the November weather, we’ve had snow, mist, fog, rain, clouds and its been freezing everyday and even I have sworn we’ll go somewhere warm for once. Krakow is not a massive city centre but we certainly clocked up some kilometres that we broke up with regular food and drink stops. Initial impressions are that its very much like Budapest and Prague, perhaps too similar to each other.

The main square was gearing up for Christmas with lots of work going off and in a way we were disappointed we were a little too early for the Christmas market but then again, I suppose it would have just been the usual fair of tourist tat. With its very own fire breathing dragon, Wawel Castle is a busy junction with views over the Vistula river a hilltop castle. The castle is a mish-mash of medieval, Baroque and Renaissance. Its free to enter though there are some areas you have to pay for but it’s cheap.

No visit to Poland is complete without sampling the food and drink. Seems rude not to engage in the national Polish drink so tried Vodka at Wódka vodka bar, beers in The Tram Bar. On a a cold winters day when the cold air has bitten, a plate of Pierogi, fried or baked Polish dumplings, from U Babci Maliny restaurant is a great comfort food.

We also managed to squeeze in a few other things including a day trip to Auschwitz and Birkenau, the Wieliczka Salt Mine, and shooting guns including an Uzi and an AK47! Its easy to become crazy in a Krakow city break, its cheap as chips and we much preferred being there mid week. Our last day was Saturday when the tourist hordes descended in large numbers making the streets and bars a very busy Krakow city break.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/krakow-city-break/feed/16403Instant Macho Swagger – Shooting Guns in Krakowhttp://www.nickcook.net/shooting-guns-in-krakow/
http://www.nickcook.net/shooting-guns-in-krakow/#respondSun, 25 Nov 2018 23:14:12 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6871We live in a country where shooting guns is considered uncommon, unless you are the estates gamekeeper, in the army or a criminal intent on blagging a bookies or a bank with…

]]>We live in a country where shooting guns is considered uncommon, unless you are the estates gamekeeper, in the army or a criminal intent on blagging a bookies or a bank with a bit of armed robbery. It just so happens we’re on a break in Poland where, certainly for the tourist crowds, shooting guns is normal, so we’re giving it both barrels and gaining some instant macho swagger by shooting guns in Krakow.

Strangely enough, you even get the chance to pick your weapons of choice. This may sound weird but we’ve gone for a custom package and I’ve picked my favourites, or certainly ones that have I’ve heard of. Everything you’ve heard of in Call of Duty seems to be in their weapons armoury.

Of course, it’s all in a controlled environment, we’re not nutjobs on a rampage or gun toting gangsters, but I don’t know if its more scary that I still want to shoot a gun or that I still know the muzzle velocity of the ones I have fired. We’ve got a selection of weapons at our disposal and its time to cock the Glock and take some shots.

Growing up as a child in the 70s and 80s in the cold war paranoia of a decadent western government, the temptation to pick the Belgian FN FAL, the so called right arm of the free world, and the very first weapon I ever held and fired in the RAF, is tempting for the sake of nostalgia. Instead we’ve picked the iconic, for all the wrong reason, Kalashnikov AK47. Adorned on country flags, adopted by guerrilla groups, the main armament of 55 armies across the world and the very weapon that Ivan and his red Russian army would have attempted to stomp all over the western world with during those MAD days during the Cold War. Apparently cheap enough and plentiful enough that you can by for the same price as a pack of fags, I’m glad I don’t smoke.

I can’t think of many reasons why I’d need to spray six hundred rounds per minute from a sub-machine and lay down a large amount of suppressive fire. Unless that is, I was a killer robot from the future sent back in time to prevent the leader of the human resistance from being born. In that case, I’d be marching in to a gun shop in down town Los Angeles ordering an Uzi 9mm with a strong Austrian accent Terminator style. I’m not a cyborg assassin from the future but I’m having a go anyway and on full automatic. It takes about 1 second to expand my bullets on full auto and we both laughed, enjoying it a little too much.

It is impossible to order an Uzi 9mm without a very strong Austrian accent like you were a killer robot from the future sent back in time

I was 8 years old and it was the 4th May 1980, we were in London walking along Prince’s Gate. The very next day, we were huddled around the television in Didcot watching the news as the SAS exploded onto the scene as they stormed the Iranian Embassy. Any weapon that’s good enough for the SAS’s Counter Revolutionary Warfare wing to storm embassies has to be good enough for me. A Heckler and Koch MP5 to take a terrorist tango down. I took down the paper target in front of me with a mix of single aimed shots and burst of 3.

Then it’s on to an AR15 (M4) Carbine with an EOTech holographic sight, very Call of Duty, and then we had a blast with a Uzkon pump action shotgun.

Taking a break from the assault rifles and a rain of hot brass, we turn to handguns. I say handguns, but the next gun,a Ruger Redhawk, was more like a hand cannon. Seeing as this a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky punk, well, do ya? Hell yes I do! That paper target positively quivered as Sam levelled the sights. It nearly knocked her out of her socks and sent her staggering back. Its got one hell of a kick and I swear there was a shockblast, it’s a huge chunk of metal and an absolute beast.

Sniper Sam

The iconic opening sequence of a tuxedo wearing , suave, debonair man, walks, suddenly turns towards the camera and then shoots, blood runs down the screen. Its not the man form the Milk Tray advert but the James Bond gun barrel sequence. Because of course, no self respecting British spy would be caught dead with a weapon that ruins the smooth lines of his suit, he’d wear something small that could be tucked away like a Walther PPK. Unfortunately this had broken so were given another choice and opted for a CZ P-10C pistol. Its the equivalent to a Glock 19 and known as the Glock killer and ended up being my most accurate grouping.

Shooting guns in Krakow

We’ve had a great time at Grotgun, the instructor was patient and helpful, showing us other weapons and helping where needed. A little strange for me not having to load the weapons or clean them though. It was a breeze to book online, we just turned up and everything was already for us. We expected to see stag do groups but only saw couples while we were there. You’re not allowed to take videos of photograph while shooting but can pose afterwards, even if we do look like a poor Dempsey and Makepeace, we’ve enjoyed shooting guns in Krakow, something a little different and certainly coming away with some instant macho swagger.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/shooting-guns-in-krakow/feed/06871Wild About Dartmoorhttp://www.nickcook.net/wild-about-dartmoor/
http://www.nickcook.net/wild-about-dartmoor/#commentsFri, 09 Nov 2018 23:38:20 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6820Autumn, the days are short, the nights are drawing in and there’s a chill in the air that signals the change of season. It’s time for crisp colourful leaves, cosy jumpers, bonfires…

]]>Autumn, the days are short, the nights are drawing in and there’s a chill in the air that signals the change of season. It’s time for crisp colourful leaves, cosy jumpers, bonfires and burning but we’re using the chance to get away for a long weekend. This time we’ve gone to the opposite end of the country from our last trip to Orkney and now we’re down to Devon and going wild about Dartmoor.

Wild ponies, wild life and wild weather. We’ve had some windy, wet and wild weather, the kind of weather that can make Dartmoor dangerous 10 steps from the car. In places, it’s remote, barren, bleak but beautiful, when we could see it that is. What to see on Dartmoor God only knows, the rain and mist does its best to make Dartmoor dark and atmospheric with freezing fog drowning out any sweeping vistas.

The place is cold enough freeze the hounds of hell, quite apt considering that Conan Doyle used Dartmoor as the location in The Hounds of the Baskerville, we’re here with our very own hound from hell, though we call him Lord Nelson. We visited from Haytor and Hound Tor to Merrivale and Grimspound, and in all honesty, we got soaked with viscous windswept rain soaking us to the skin. Trying to take a photograph was an absolute nightmare and with a new DSLR, I was eager not to kill this one like we did with our last one with the rain in Iceland.

The joy of Dartmoor is in the wildlife. The hardy breed of the Dartmoor pony is an iconic sight, semi ferral and grazing on the grass. They’ve seen some extreme weather but they appear friendly readily coming up to the car. It’s a good job they know where to shelter, roaming wild about Dartmoor with over 386 square miles of granite tors and moorland which we could easily get lost in. The mist, fog and rain have robbed us of views and we’ll be back one day. Just one day when it’s not so rainy.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/wild-about-dartmoor/feed/16820In The Footsteps of Dinosaurs – Isle of Skyehttp://www.nickcook.net/in-the-footsteps-of-dinosaurs-isle-of-skye/
http://www.nickcook.net/in-the-footsteps-of-dinosaurs-isle-of-skye/#respondThu, 27 Sep 2018 20:24:20 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6654On the way back down from our adventures in the Orkney Islands, we’ve had several nights in a rustic lodge near Plockton. Plockton is a gorgeous village where The Wicker Man and…

]]>On the way back down from our adventures in the Orkney Islands, we’ve had several nights in a rustic lodge near Plockton. Plockton is a gorgeous village where The Wicker Man and Hamish Macbeth was filmed and overlooks Loch Carron. Our lodge is on a secluded farm west of Plockton and the views are to die for.

Loch Carron

We’re based at Craig Highland Farm to get away from it all. The place we are stopping has no TV, no mobile signal, a self enforced digital detox. It’s stunningly quiet and night time gives a fantastically dark sky with the Milky Way clearly visible overhead.

This was our view from the lodge. The first timelapse was taken using a Canon 200D with 300 x 0.5 second shots:

It’s also a great place to explore the Isle of Skye. Visitors to Skye are naturally drawn to its landscape, the sharp ridges of the Black Cuillin mountains, Trotternish and Quiraing and it reminds me of the rock formations and landscapes of Iceland. Who can blame the visitors coming here, after all, Skye is gorgeous and its also pretty popular with the tourist hordes that descend on Sky to leave their mark, and they certainly do leave their mark. A walk to the Fairy Pools will never be in seclusion with paths and grass worn away by the thousands of footprints left from the day.

The tourists are not the only ones to leave their mark, so did the dinosaurs, and the one of the main reasons for our visit to is to go dinosaur hunting, walking in the footsteps of dinosaurs on the Isle of Skye.

Our last journey here dinosaur hunting wasn’t that successful, attacked by midgies on a very wet and misty day and trying to convince ourselves we’d found the famed footprints on An Corran beach at Staffin Bay. Fossils are best found in dryer conditions but Skye isn’t exactly known for its rain free climate, beaches are known for having bodies of water… but today we seem relatively lucky as the sun is out.

Plockton. The place of Summerisle in The Wicker Man was filmed here.

Returning back to Staffin Bay, the last time we came here it was deserted, this time there a few visitors each with their head down looking for the dinosaur footprints. Lord Nelson remains uninterested in the beasts, and wees quite possibly in the footprints of a beast that wandered past millions of years ago. Eventually we were advised by someone to go and see the newly discovered footprints at Duntulm where they were much more noticeable and giving us very specific instruction on where to find them.

Heading past the Trotternish Ridge, finally seeing the Old Man of Storr and the rock formations of Quiraing, we ahead to Duntulm. Most visitors to Duntulm will head to the castle, the viking stronghold, but wont look to the unremarkable looking beach area to their left. 170 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic period, this area was a shallow salt water lagoon and a much more temperate climate.

In 2015, a study team discovered hundreds of footprints made by plant-eating long-necked sauropods and now we’re standing in the footsteps of these giants, some footprint up to 70cm in diameter. We know we’ve got the right place because there is filming here and the expert attached to the filming team offer to show the prints. The footprints look like large round holes but are in a clear walking line.

Sauropods dinosaur footprints at Duntulm in Skye

Sauropods were the early distant relatives of Brontosaur and Diplodocus weighing more than 10 tonnes and 15 meters in length, the largest animals ever to have lived on land, you wouldn’t want them stepping on your toes. I get a kick knowing that these huge beasts walked here, especially great for kids, even those at 47 years old. If you do visit, just consider that these prints have been happily sat there for the past 170 million years, they’ve survived years without interference and they don’t need you hammering and chiselling the ground to try and claim a fossil footprint for your collection. Leave them alone to let others keep walking in the footsteps of dinosaurs.

]]>Our Orcadian adventure now captured, partially at least, in a travel video. Just a bit of fun using a mixture of a Canon 200D and our very basic Go Pro. It’s a long way from the (Nottingham) shire to the edge of Scotland and then on to the Orkney Islands but don’t worry, its not just 12 hours of us driving each other mad.

I actually quite like this video though, a lot more fun editing this one together. I didn’t quite do the whole storyboard thing I said i was going to do last time although some of the planned shots didn’t quite work but some really did well, especially the car going over the camera and then away from the camera. In fact I might just do more of these, blogs are dying, kids these days can’t be bothered to read more than a few words so video looks to be the way forward.

I’m not expecting to fly up the ranks of YouTube just yet but with a whole 5 subscribers… I should start monetising, reaching out to brands, directing Bond movies, show my bum in a bikini as a preview thumbnail….

Enjoy The Road to Orkney travel video. You can see the other posts on Orkney below:

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/the-road-to-orkney-travel-video/feed/16768Adventures in Orkney – Top Sites to See in Orkneyhttp://www.nickcook.net/top-sites-to-see-in-orkney/
http://www.nickcook.net/top-sites-to-see-in-orkney/#commentsWed, 19 Sep 2018 21:41:52 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6713Following on from the earlier post of our Adventures in Orkney- What You Need To Know and for those who are absolute suckers of big erect stones (schoolboy giggle), then you might…

]]>Following on from the earlier post of our Adventures in Orkney- What You Need To Know and for those who are absolute suckers of big erect stones (schoolboy giggle), then you might like the below of our top sites to see in Orkney. Orkney has it all, a collection of fine features that we saw on our adventures in Orkney. Not a comprehensive list, but I’ll add to it later when I finish the video.

The Ring of Brodgar

Moody, atmospheric, yes, they both describe me and this place. The Ring of Brodgar is one of the largest neolithic henges in Britain and an iconic site in the ancient history of Orkeny. Set against a dramatic sky and the moody waters of the Harray and Stenness lochs, gives this near perfect stone circle of 104 metres across a very atmospheric place for prominent community ceremonies. Erected 4500 years ago, these stones are much smaller than those of Stenness with 27 of the original 60 stones still stand and watch as visitors pass.

The Broch of Gurness

Heading north on Mainland to The Broch of Gurness, we find a wallet full of cash. Not quite Viking or Iron Age treasure, especially as we handed it in (yes all of it, every penny). Located on a windy shore overlooking the nearby island of Rousay, at first glance, the place looks inhospitable, the water of Eynhallow Sound looks deadly choppy with a constant battering from the wind.

But back 2000 years ago, the climate a a couple of degrees warmer and this was one of the most important settlements in Orkney with up to 14 houses around the broch. The broch itself, a fortified tower, would have been imposing, up to 10 metres tall. I can’t build a greenhouse base 2 bricks high never mind a lichen spotted drystone wall that high. Less busy than Maeshowe but no less important, its worth a trip.

Cuween Hill Cairn

First off on our visit is the neolithic chambered cairn of Cuween Hill. Constructed over 4500 years ago, this stands over 2 metres tall inside. Historic Scotland has thoughtfully provided a torch for you to grab before you enter the gated narrow passageway but the batteries were as long dead as the 8 human remains that were found inside. Also inside, the skulls of 24 small dogs. We didn’t have the heart to tell Lord Nelson, he was already traumatised by the ferry trip and now he’s inside a tomb wondering why the smell of ancient dogs is hanging around.

The Standing Stones of Stenness

Magnificently tall. You see these stones long before anything else around the Brodgar area. Raised 5000 years ago, these four remaining stones are up to six metres eight. As if neolithic man didn’t have enough to do, slogging these stones from different parts of Orkney would have been a mammoth undertaking. Estimates suggest 50,000 hours to build the circle and henge. That’s nearly as much time as we spent planning our Orkney trip. I’m just glad Nelson didn’t wee on them.

Unstan Cairn

A well preserved and a free to visit tomb. Even better that there’s no hoards of people. This cairn located on the scenic shore Loch of Stenness looks like a smaller version of Maeshowe but built differently inside with stalled burial compartments. Unstan is notable for the pottery that was found inside and gave rise to Unstan Ware that was found around afterwards and thought to date back to 3000BC. An undignified shuffle will get you through the narrow passageway.

The Churchill Barriers

The sea is everywhere in Orkney. Wherever we drove, you were always reminded that you were on an island as the fantastically blue sea was always in view. Some of the islands are connected by the Churchill Barriers, constructed after the sinking of the HMS Royal Oak and the loss of 834 lives in 1939 by a German U Boat that had penetrated the previous blockship defences of the scuttled German fleet in WW1. Some of those scuttled boats still jut out of the water at Scapa Flow and reminds me of the boats in the harbour at Stanley in the Falklands. The barriers were constructed with the help of Italian prisoners who also manged to build themselves a little Italian Chapel.

Tomb of the Eagles – Isbister Chambered Cairn

Another tomb but one with a more personalised experience. This tomb was discovered by a local farmer back in the 50’s when he was looking for some stone for his farm. Digging by a wall he found some axe heads a a few other items, kept on digging and uncovered a stone chamber with human skulls and eagle bones inside. Recognising that he was coming across something quite significant, he contacted the archaeology department who took 18 years to come out. So he opted to continue on his own and the Tomb of the Eagles is still run by the family now.

It’s a more personalised experience with hands on artefacts, talks on the discovery of the 5000 year old neolithic tomb and how the bodies were excarnated before being placed inside. In the end, 16,000 human bones were found. Its a mile walk to the tomb, located, and I would suggest deliberately placed overlooking a stunning rocky outcrop. To get in to the tomb’s low entrance, you pull yourself along a trolley with an overhead rope. It’s a superb location and on the way back took a walk around the coastal route spotting a group of 5 seals in the water.

We were in Orkney for 3 days. There are loads to see, loads to do and in all honesty we should have stopped longer. We should have visited more islands, especially Hoy which looks stunningly moody and impressive as you drive to Stromness. Don’t let the long drive put you off, you wont regret it.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/top-sites-to-see-in-orkney/feed/46713Adventures in Orkney – What you need to knowhttp://www.nickcook.net/adventures-in-orkney-what-you-need-to-know/
http://www.nickcook.net/adventures-in-orkney-what-you-need-to-know/#commentsWed, 19 Sep 2018 21:37:43 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6622The road to Orkney is a long one. It doesn’t look far on a map but it’s a 12 hour drive and far more than the 500 miles that The Proclaimers would…

]]>The road to Orkney is a long one. It doesn’t look far on a map but it’s a 12 hour drive and far more than the 500 miles that The Proclaimers would walk. There is also a pretty hefty swim involved if you don’t get the ferry across to the Orkney Islands as well. That’s just one way for our 3 night stay on our adventures in Orkney.

We’ve decided to go somewhere a little bit off the beaten path, somewhere a bit more remote to get away from it all and get away from people. So, a bit like Brexit, we decided to drive off the edge of a cliff and then just keep going regardless eventually hoping to hit something. We said that last time we visited Scotland that we’d be back and do an extreme Scottish road trip, driving to Orkney is defiantly that.

Orkney is not one island but a collection of seventy low-lying islands populated by Orcadians, more Scandinavian than Scottish. Orkney has its fair share of sites to see from the neolithic, norse, nature, wildlife and weather. Now they’re all on our doorstep for us to discover and explore with our adventures in Orkney. Considering the amount of questions we’ve had, I’ve decided to list these in the style of a Q and A session on Orkney – what you need to know.

Orkney, it’s a bit remote isn’t it?

Yes, that’s the idea. Don’t worry though, it’s got Tesco. You don’t have to drive far to get away from anybody and it’s also close enough for civilisation. Mainland Orkney is not massive and you can drive round in a day if you wanted but you’d be cheating yourself. Yes, there’s WiFi. Yes there’s accommodation, yes there’s Airbnb. And yes, Italian prisoners of war were held here during WWII although not in Airbnb and they didn’t have WiFi. They were put to good use though constructing causeways to get between some of the islands.

Block ships at Scapa Flow

But it’s miles away isn’t it?

Yeah…. not wanting to drive 12 hours in one go from Nottinghamshire, never mind the 30 wee stops for the dog, we’ve split our trip up with an overnight stop on the way up at Blair Atholl. We did consider camping but our tent was so mouldy that even after disinfecting it, it was still creating new cultures of unbelievable toxicity that it could spawn a chemical catastrophe that a third world dictator would die for and give us some awful lung condition in the next few years. So we opted for a cheap Airbnb caravan instead.

The Proclaimers would walk 500 miles but we drove nearly 600 miles, and considering diesel prices for a guzzly 4×4….. Driving north on the eastern part of the North Coast 500, we drive just past John o’ Groats to catch the ferry from Gills Bay for the one hour trip to the Orkney Islands. No you don’t have to book the ferry but you might be taking a chance. Yes, it’s not cheap (£140 return).

Surely there’s nothing to see?

Are you kidding? Considering that neolithic Orkney is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the sheer amount of neolithic stones and tombs, some older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge, give the long-suffering Mrs Cook déjà vu of our megalithic monument tour from a few years back. I’m a sucker for big erect stones, I wish Mrs Cook was as well. People have been here for 10,000 years, they’ve left a few bits behind. Have you not heard about Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar, Skara Brae? There’s even a current archaeological excavation going off at the Ness of Brodgar.

Did we tell you about the wildlife? Plenty. We see seals swimming in the sea and swear they waved at us. Sea stacks at Yesnaby and stunning coastal scenery, clear blue waters and lovely sandy shores at Skail Beach at Skara Brae. Drive right through the quaint fishing village of Stromness or explore the many cairns. You don’t have to pay to go into most cairns, there’s an element of trust that the people who visit Orkney are not complete scumbags who will come in to a tomb and daub graffiti of sexual innuendo or steal the torch that’s provided. Unless you are a viking boasting about a sexual conquest at Maeshowe. We spent 3 nights in Orkney and still had so much more to see.

What about the weather?

Yeah, it’s wild and its windy, well it was for us. The weather is mix of sunshine and soaking showers with wild wind. The ability to look like a man who’s left his waterproof coat in the car and get completely drenched in 30 seconds from one moment of having glorious sunshine to stinging rain whipped up by the winds caught us out a few times. A walk on the Brough of Birsay or the coastal area of Mull Head past the collapsed sea cave called The Gloup and up to the Brough of Deerness made sure we regretted our clothing choices.

Should I visit the Orkney Islands?

Yes. It’s good enough for Vikings s it should be good enough for you. See the next post, Top Sites to See in Orkney. We loved it. Video coming soon.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/adventures-in-orkney-what-you-need-to-know/feed/26622How Not To Make A Travel Videohttp://www.nickcook.net/how-not-to-make-a-travel-video/
http://www.nickcook.net/how-not-to-make-a-travel-video/#commentsMon, 27 Aug 2018 15:52:11 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6656This is it, my first travel video, my first proper attempt with music and cuts to the beat. It should be more accurately titled How Not To Make A Travel Video. I’m…

]]>This is it, my first travel video, my first proper attempt with music and cuts to the beat. It should be more accurately titled How Not To Make A Travel Video. I’m not Werner Herzog, I’m not Casey Neistat and I’m certainly not as creative as those You Tubers out there that make great travel videos or daily vlogs. But this is my first proper attempt and I’m sure practice will make perfect.

Granted, the footage is from just over 2 years ago from our trip to Norway with Hurtigruten and I’ve tried to montage it together to show some highlights. Story is king, but I didn’t know that when we were just wildly waving various different cameras around. You wouldn’t believe how much footage was cut because it was even worse than what ended up in the final video. Nowadays its all drones and sweeping vistas shot in 4k. I need to learn how to hold a camera steady, shoot in sequences and way more than I need.

Editing a 2 minute film has been two days of torture. I’m not expecting to be crowdfunded any time soon or for Warner Brothers to ring and ask me to direct their next big project unless they want a wobbly wind drenched disaster. Besides, I’m busy storyboarding our next adventure to Orkney. Something I’m sure my stunning total of 2 YouTube subscribers can’t wait for…. who surely will stay tuned for further adventures in my film making series of how not to make a travel video.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/how-not-to-make-a-travel-video/feed/36656Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place – Beginner’s Caving in the Peak Districthttp://www.nickcook.net/beginners-caving-peak-district/
http://www.nickcook.net/beginners-caving-peak-district/#commentsSat, 21 Jul 2018 20:44:02 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6473We’ve been beginners caving in the Peak District and its been ace! I’ve been accused in the past of being a cave dwelling uneducated troglodyte, so what better way to live up…

]]>We’ve been beginners caving in the Peak District and its been ace! I’ve been accused in the past of being a cave dwelling uneducated troglodyte, so what better way to live up to that name and actually go caving. It’s time to descend into the abyss, go below in to the bowels of the planet, we’re going underground with beginner’s caving in the Peak District.

Call it what you like, Potholing, Spelunking or Caving, either way, I get the feeling I might get stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m not the smallest of fellas, and the last thing anyone wants is to be stuck in a rut. We’ve been to show caves like Speedwell and Peak Caverns and Ice Age Rock Art Caves at Creswell Crags but this half day caving experience in the Peak District will scratch beneath the surface. A collection of scrambles, squeezes, short climbs and hopefully not too many struggles. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get strangled by Mrs C though.

The entrance to the cave isn’t a secret but it’s not advertised that widely either, suffice to say we rendezvous at a location in the Peak District before we take a short drive to Giant’s Hole cave. We’re then kitted out in wellies, overalls, hard hat and a head torch, prepared to get deep down and dirty. The weather is boiling so it feels a little strange dressed up in thermal leggings and fleece in this weather. But we’re going underground where the Castleton caves are certainly cooler and chillier and pretty much a constant climate.

We follow a stream from the cave entrance at Giant’s Hole with a few twists and turn, some crawling and crab walking, squeezing sideways and stooping, we rest up at Base Camp chamber with its 11 metre high walls. We try a little climbing in this chamber on to the ledge. The walls are high, and a constant slow drip over thousands of years has produced a small finger size hole in the floor. Also in here is a nice squeeze if you are small and slim but that’s definitely not me. Without our head lamps, its pitch black and a total absence of light, you should really try it.

Venturing further on we come to Boss Aven chamber with an impressive flowstone cascade 15 metres high before we get to our end point of Garlands Pot, a 7 metre deep pothole normally flowing with lots of water but due to Britain’s unusual dry spell its a smaller stream that sprays over the side. We hung over the side on the edge, staring into the pit of eternal doom to find our own faces staring back at us….. only kidding.

Our caving and potholing experience has been a blast, it’s a different world with layers of limestone and lava basalt bedrock, stalactites and stalagmites, and sea floor fossils (Crinoids) from thousands of years ago.

It should be obvious to say that caving can be dangerous and sometimes fatal, and I’m not talking about the plot of The Descent. One person unfortunately passed away in this cave, so you should always go with someone who knows what they are doing. Our beginner’s caving in the Peak District is with Pete Knight from Peak Instruction who’s been informative an led us through today. He’s also taken these great photographs, thanks Pete, it’s been hard work and we’re sweating buckets but we’ve had a super time and suspect we’ll be back.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/beginners-caving-peak-district/feed/1647324 Hours in Liverpoolhttp://www.nickcook.net/24-hours-in-liverpool/
http://www.nickcook.net/24-hours-in-liverpool/#respondFri, 29 Jun 2018 13:30:03 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6449We’re spending 24 hours in Liverpool. We’ve mainly come to see the Terracotta Warriors at the World Museum but seeing as we are spending the night here we thought we’d see what…

]]>We’re spending 24 hours in Liverpool. We’ve mainly come to see the Terracotta Warriors at the World Museum but seeing as we are spending the night here we thought we’d see what the rest of the city has to offer on our very magical mystery tour of Liverpool.

We’ve picked a great week to be off, the weather is roasting, so much so that we’ve seen a huge smoke plume over Saddleworth Moor. Arriving at the sprawling concrete jungle of Liverpool relatively late in the day, we first visited the World Museum to see the Terracotta Warriors before heading further into the city.

Four mop-tapped lads who shook the world outside the Liver Building

So what did we end up doing with 24 hours in Liverpool? Take photos of bronze sculptures, how very unoriginal, how way behind the curve. Very unlike those 4 mop-topped lads who shook the world back in the swinging sixties.

It was impossible to miss Matthew Street, the legendary home of the Cavern Club where the Beatles played in their early days. Today, Beatles tunes are blasted out 24/7. Buts that’s OK, as, surprise, surprise, we see Cilla Black there welcoming us to Liverpool with open arms and a lorra lorra love while John Lennon looks on by the Cavern Club. If the Beatlemania and deaf-tone tons of tourists doesn’t make you twist and shout, then the aggressive beggars or amateur musicians plugging away might. Busking away on a banjo is alright, but you’ll never make a living out of it.

Down by the waterfront area, we wonder pass Albert Dock, a world heritage waterfront. A Titanic memorial, the Fab Four and a bronze Billy Fury adorn the docks. Apart from a few museums, Liverpool suffers like every other city in the UK, chock full of the same chains, shocking service and homogeneous high streets. We went to Las Iguanas and waited 4 years before we got a drink and an entire ice age came and went as we waited for food.

UK city breaks are becoming pretty much the same everywhere we go these days and to be honest, I could kick myself, I should have done more research to see what else was around. We should also have gotten here sooner, time was against us, the ticking cost of car parking is becoming a significant factor in UK travel these days. We thought about taking a ferry ‘cross the Mersey, not to escape, but to see the U boat story but left this to late, a bit like this U Boat when it entered the war.

We did manage to take a viewing from the Radio City Tower / St Johns Beacon. The viewing gallery, 400 feet up gives panoramic views across the city and gives a you view of everything if you don’t manage fit everything into 24 hours in Liverpool.

Surprise, surprise, Cilla Black welcomes us to Liverpool with open arms

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/24-hours-in-liverpool/feed/06449The Terracotta Warriors in Liverpoolhttp://www.nickcook.net/terracotta-warriors-liverpool/
http://www.nickcook.net/terracotta-warriors-liverpool/#commentsTue, 26 Jun 2018 21:49:47 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6007We’ve come to see the Terracotta Warriors in Liverpool. This is not an Asian invasion, nor is it a takeover of armed foreign immigrants like the Daily Fail would have you believe,…

]]>We’ve come to see the Terracotta Warriors in Liverpool. This is not an Asian invasion, nor is it a takeover of armed foreign immigrants like the Daily Fail would have you believe, this exhibition at the World Museum shows a small number of the Terracotta Warriors in Liverpool as part of the China’s First Emperor and Terracotta Warriors exhibition.

Terracotta Warriors at Liverpool’s World Museum

The terracotta warriors were discovered in 1974 and originally commissioned by China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang. There are thought to be around 8000 figures in total with only 2000 excavated so far. A sprawling tomb complex of burial pits 200 times larger than the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, was discovered by villagers digging for a well in 1974. Little did they know they were about to unearth a Terracotta Army with 8000 life-sized individual soldiers.

Qin Shi Huang became the first ruler to unify China in 221 BC, and being obsessed with wanting to live forever, started assembling his army of the afterlife when he was 13 years old. He had a reputation as a cruel and ruthless ruler when he died at the age of 49. I’m 46 and only managed to lay a set of bricks for a greenhouse base that wont last my life time never mind 8000 warriors for the afterlife. Still, I’ve got time I suppose.

The exhibition is a timed event and we went for the last viewing of the day. We hoped this would reduce the number of people so we could get a decent view. It didn’t. There’s a large group of people for every showing which starts with what we could only assume was an enforced marketing film from the Chinese tourism board. In all honesty, it doesn’t take that long to wander through and it is a bit expensive at £15 per ticket but I guess that’s cheaper than flying to China.

Armoured General

Armoured General

The highest ranking warriors excavated from the burial pits with this one being discovered in 1976. Wearing scaled iron armour, he would also have been armed with a sword and commanded from a chariot.

Heavy Infantryman

Heavy Infantryman

This heavy infantryman was excavated in 1992 and would have formed part of the main battalion and would have been armed with a either sword, halberd or crossbow.

Light Infantryman

Positioned at the front of the main battalion and likely a conscripted peasant. The light infantryman didn’t wear armour and were deployed first.

Military Officer

Military Officer

This unarmoured military officer was excavated in 1979 and likely held a spear.

Charioteer

Charioteer Terracotta Warrior

This charioteer was excavated in 1977 and was originally buried with a real wooden chariot and drawn by four terracotta horses.

Kneeling Archer

Kneeling Archer

This armoured archer was armed with a cxrossbowthat could shoot heavy bolts over long distances. It was slow to load but required less skill and strength to use.

Standing Archer

Standing Archer

Standing archers were all unarmoured and positioned at the front of the battalion.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/terracotta-warriors-liverpool/feed/16007Back to School with an Indian Takeaway Cookery Classhttp://www.nickcook.net/indian-takeaway-cookery-class/
http://www.nickcook.net/indian-takeaway-cookery-class/#respondSat, 23 Jun 2018 18:49:14 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6375I don’t know a Bhuna from a Balti, so that’s precisely why we’ve come the Manor School of Fine Cuisine at the Nottingham School of Cookery to get instruction from our lovely…

]]>I don’t know a Bhuna from a Balti, so that’s precisely why we’ve come the Manor School of Fine Cuisine at the Nottingham School of Cookery to get instruction from our lovely hosts with an Indian takeaway cookery class. Today though, we’ve turned up the heat on our cooking knowledge and we’ve been slaving over a hot stove all day.

Nick making chicken bhuna at the Nottingham School of Cookery

Cook by name, not necessarily by nature. Somewhere down the ancestral line, some poor mud spattered peasant managed to whip up a warm meal of roasted rat with enough skills and distinction to be given the second name Cook. That name stuck but unfortunately that cooking skill didn’t percolate that well through the old family DNA.

Sam delighted at her Bangalore aloo

Hence we find ourselves going back to school with this class. It’s also a chance for us to do something together. And I don’t mean the washing up either. That’s all done for us, as is the ‘mis en place’ or the weighing up of ingredients.

Once upon a time, I made a curry from scratch, I could only describe it like having a missile rammed up your nose as the flesh fell from my bones, like a slow cooked human lamb shank on an overcooked cannibal course. It had a probable Scoville scale rating of 2 million degrees, which according to male bragging rights is the right strength. It’s definitely not, when it comes to chillies and heat, size says a lot, and bigger is not always better.

Making lamb samosas

We’re cooking one starter, one main and side dish each. The recipes are provided, which we can also take home and will no doubt inflict our interpretations on you if you visit, especially seeing as we’ve cooked enough food for about 16 people. It might even be served on our own home made plates from our pottery class earlier in the year if you are really unlucky. My cooking skills are renowned in our home, at least for those 3 special occasions each year when it happens. Although I suspect that will now need to double as we’ve both learnt 3 new dishes each.

Onion bhaji

A fine feast of food with lamb samosa and onion bhaji for starters, followed by a chicken bhuna and beef keema for the main, and side dish of savoury rice and Bangalore aloo. All directed by our marvellous hosts Claire and Linda and their team of helpers supplying us with tea and snacks through the day. I’ve even learnt some knife skills, not managed to cut myself unlike when I worked at the food bank last year, and I’ve even managed to impress my wife. We’ve had a great time and suspect we’ll be back for seconds.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/indian-takeaway-cookery-class/feed/06375RIP Moonwalker Alan Bean – Remembering Meeting the 4th Man on the Moonhttp://www.nickcook.net/rip-moonwalker-alan-bean-remembering-meeting-the-4th-man-on-the-moon/
http://www.nickcook.net/rip-moonwalker-alan-bean-remembering-meeting-the-4th-man-on-the-moon/#commentsSun, 27 May 2018 19:24:35 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6393RIP Moonwalker Alan Bean who sadly passed away yesterday, May 26th 2018. Alan Bean was the first astronaut I ever met. The most warm, personable and the funniest. I remember him talking…

Alan Bean was the first astronaut I ever met. The most warm, personable and the funniest. I remember him talking about his experiences on the wife Leslie, his two dogs ET and Moonbeam and how he wanted to play a joke on scientists by pretending to have found an arrowhead on the moon! Then played a joke on the audience when he left the room with his microphone on! Rest in peace, it was a pleasure to meet you.

The original post below is a condensed version of the meet and talk I attended.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/rip-moonwalker-alan-bean-remembering-meeting-the-4th-man-on-the-moon/feed/16393Lazy Days in the Lake Districthttp://www.nickcook.net/lake-district/
http://www.nickcook.net/lake-district/#respondSun, 22 Apr 2018 08:26:29 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6331OK, let’s get this out of the way. This holiday is not what it was supposed to be. We had hired a cameprvan, a classic VW to nomadically wander the Scottish highlands,…

]]>OK, let’s get this out of the way. This holiday is not what it was supposed to be. We had hired a cameprvan, a classic VW to nomadically wander the Scottish highlands, islands and wild camp. Except the campervan company went bust 3 weeks before we were due to hire it, now Van Life and the North Coast 500 will have to wait. Instead we are now forced to take a holiday elsewhere. I don’t even know what to see in the Lake District.

I’ve taken Mrs C tomb raiding across Egypt inside the pyramids at Giza, I’ve taken her snowmobiling across a frozen lake in the Arctic Circle, so where does she choose when the campervan company goes bust? The Lake District; where old people come to die. I’m convinced it’s a place where 76 year olds go, not where 46 year olds should be going. I don’t care that 15 million people visited the Lake District last year, and I don’t care in the same way we have an ageing population.

In fact, the only thing that seems to have swung it is the lure of a hot tub that comes with the premium lodge. Creative advertising being what it is, I interpreted this as a static caravan with some decking and an outdoor bath. Turns out the premium lodge actually turned out to be premium, plusher and posher than our home, surrounded with the snowy summits of Blencathra in the distance. Looks like we’ll have to take it easy and have some lazy days in the Lake District

Lazy days in the Lake District with a hot tub holiday

What to see in the Lake District?

Having immediately dismissed the idea of a Wainwright walk, we didn’t want to be daft as daffodils or wander lonely as a cloud up the top of Hellvelyn, especially as we don’t any gear or any idea, the first thing to see in the Lake Distract is common sense – definitely a sign of old age.

We opted for a more gentler walk around Aria Force and Ullswater. Except we got the wrong car park and our gentle walk ended up as a 2 hour ramble stumbling over daffodils and wondering what our words would be worth be worth (Wordsworth – see what I did there!) shouting for help under the roar of Aria Force waterfall.

Next up, we arrive at Castlerigg Stone Circle. Castlerigg is on a small hill surrounded by great views of Blencathra and snow topped Helvellyn. There are 38 stones here, 30 metres in diameter built around 3000 BC during the Neolithic age where our friends in Egypt were drawing up rather more grand designs while we rolled some rocks up a hill. Still, I suppose they had better weather for it.

Being a little bit of a misanthrope* (*huge), we head out away from the crowds for a smaller atmospheric lake at Buttermere. Taking the road from Keswick to Buttermere, a look on Google Maps suggests this is impossible as the single track road is festooned with 7 million parked cars parked up as those 15 million tourists I mentioned seem to have all visited on the same day. Luckily for us, we’ve come along when there’s been rain lashing and winds howling. A calm and serene view this is not, we don’t get to see a mirror glazed lake surface, we get to see Buttermere being battered and The Lone Tree awfully lonely. People told us we would be blown away by the Lake District, we didn’t think they’d mean it. We were forced to take shelter in the nearby pub.

Sam and Nelson being battered at Buttermere in the Lake District

We’ve got a new car to put through its paces and it just so happens that nearby we have Hardknott Pass. This is the steepest road in Britain with a 33% gradient and a heart-stopping series of steep sharp bends. It’s exactly the type of road that Jeremy Clarkson and his band of fuckwits would love to roar across except you can’t go fast unless you tumble off the side or unless you want Clarkson and his fuckwits to tumble off. If I thought the road from RAF Mount Pleasant to Stanley in the Falklands was bad (it is, its still got mines on both sides of the road) then its nothing compared to this road. It only involved one set of tears, a ruined make-up face and a frayed marriage.

The Romans built a fort here. Hardknott fort, or the more snappily named Mediobogdum fort must have been the shittest posting ever. Quite what the Romans were thinking when they decided to set up shop here, god only knows. It’s a different scale of bleakness from Housesteads but does have a great view of Eskdale. Imagine being told to up-sticks from the cushy Dalmation coast to the farthest corner of the Roman Empire on some god forsaken island at the top of a windy summit. You’ve then had to lug up a load of rocks to build the Roman Fort yourself while fighting off the native Britons.

Wanting to preserve the sanctity of our marriage, we decided not to go the same way as we came in and headed off for the coast in the distance that you can see from the top of Hardknott Pass. A coastline blighted by the industrial complex of Sellafield. Walking along the beach at Seascale, I remind my wife that I still want to visit Chernobyl, even though I’m not a fan of nuclear power. You can’t see it, taste it or feel the radiation unless its the elephant’s foot standing on you or radiations burns which I am definitely suffering from though that may have been from the sun and not the nearby nuclear power station.

Our final day in the Lake District, so we did the most touristy thing that we could, we hired a boat at Windermere. She was called Jane, but that sounded a a bit plain Jane. So we renamed her. Observing the old maritime tradition of naming ships after women, I gave this a lot of thought. She was sleek with great lines and very sexy, therefore she was renamed the USS (Unsinkable Sailing Ship) Taylor Swift. A fine vessel indeed. Besides, this is probably the only chance I would get to enter Taylor Swift.

In command at the helm of the USS Taylor Swift. A fine vessel. Salty sea dog Lord Nelson looks out for pirates.

This is not quite Survive the Savage Sea that the Robertson family endured but we were quite nervous. The last time we were on a ship was in the Arctic Circle and that wasn’t exactly fun. Now equipped with a Captain’s hat, Captain Cook, the salty sea dog Lord Nelson and First Mate entered USS Taylor Swift. To convince ourselves we were in warmer climates like the Med and not the Lake District, we pushed the pedal to the metal (or pushed the lever to stern on the fibreglass hull) and played the theme tune to Miami Vice. Damn that rock and roll lifestyle. As if to mark the occasion, a Eurofighter gave us a flypast by former colleagues in the Air Force , so I gave it a fine naval salute. In fact, anything sailing passed had a salute thrown at it (old RAF habits die hard).

We got a super cheap price due to booking last minute so at least I could have a sit in the hot tub and suffer a midlife and existential crisis in comfort while looking up towards a dark sky and lots of stars to wonder how many other beings on other worlds were sat in hot tubs having an existential crisis and ruing their holiday choices. Clearly, the hot tub was the first great lake we dipped our toes in, in The Lake District, but not the last. We’ve had torrential torrents and scorching sun in our few short days in the Lake District but we’ve also had some fun.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/lake-district/feed/06331Meeting Astronaut Rick Mastracchiohttp://www.nickcook.net/astronaut-rick-mastracchio/
http://www.nickcook.net/astronaut-rick-mastracchio/#respondFri, 30 Mar 2018 08:43:51 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6022What do you do if you fail the eyesight test for the US Air Force, then fail the eyesight test for the US Navy? You go straight over their heads and join…

]]>What do you do if you fail the eyesight test for the US Air Force, then fail the eyesight test for the US Navy? You go straight over their heads and join NASA directly. That’s what Rick Mastracchio did to get the coolest job off the planet, spending 227 days in space, flying on the Space Shuttle, Soyuz, International Space Station and complete 9 spacewalks. Today I meet astronaut Rick Mastracchio.

Organised by the superb team over at Space Lectures, former NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Space Lectures connected over social media and now he’s here to give a talk and a feature packed presentation which I’ve managed to capture below. Its’ a long read but worth it – Rick Mastracchio is a very friendly, likeable character and gave a very enthusiastic talk!

I often get asked, how did you become an astronaut? The truth is every astronaut has a different path. A lot of people think they are all military pilots, but I wasn’t. When I got out of college I tried to become a military pilot, I took the exams and the tests but I didn’t have perfect vision so I couldn’t be a pilot. I did that with the US Air Force and then US Navy, I got turned down by all of them so went over their heads and joined NASA. Now when I see an Air Force guy I say they fly too low and too slow!

The truth is I grew up in the north-east part of the US and NASA is on the opposite side of the country. NASA was this mysterious place for me and after I graduated from college with an engineering degree, my wife and I had a house with two small children, my wife saw an advertisement in a magazine. Nowadays they do it on the internet but back in the 1980s, I had never seen an advert for NASA astronauts, I thought that was great and wanted to see what an astronaut application looked like, thought it would be really cool. It’s just some government form, I threw it in the drawer and forgot about it.

Shortly after that, the Challenger accident happened. I was an engineer up in Connecticut, the Challenger accident happened, I pulled that application out and sent it in. The reason is because I knew that NASA would come back strong and recover from that accident, they would need people and they would need help, so figured I would send my application in and see. A few months later a I got a phone call, they said they wanted me to come down and work for them as an engineer, not as an astronaut.

I moved my family down to Houston. Houston is a great place but it’s not the prettiest place. We moved down to Houston in August, the temperature is near a hundred degrees and humidity is near 100% and we’re driving down the highway near Houston and my wife looks at me and says “you owe me big time for this one.” I’m still yet to pay her back 25 years later. So I’m down in Houston working as an engineer at Johnson Space Centre, applying over 9 years of applications, got interviewed 3 times and eventually got selected. Twenty years as an astronaut, selected in the 16th class of astronauts in 1986 and spent about 21 years as an astronaut, I left NASA in June 2017 and now work for Orbital ATK where I actually build the cargo ships that go up to the ISS.

Here we are in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), there’s a lot of talk about going back to the moon, going to Mars. Right now we are in LEO, this is basically where almost every mission have gone, all the Mercury and Gemini, some of the Apollo missions, all the Space Shuttle missions are in LEO, all the Soyuz mission, all the Chinese, Russians, everybody, the ISS are LEO, over 300 crews. Only 9 crews have gone beyond LEO to the moon. LEO is 250 miles, it seems like we are very far away but only 250 miles up, circling around the Earth at about 5 miles per second. These 9 crews went 240,000 miles, that’s a thousand times further. Now we’re talking about going to Mars, the distances grow exponentially. When people talk about going to the moon or mars and how difficult it is, it s just a question of distance but also a question of other challenges like radiation, keeping human crew members healthy and alive. NASA is trying to get beyond LEO and leave that to commercialisation.

I got to launch on 3 Space Shuttle missions, my first one was Atlantis on STS-106, STS-118 and then STS-131. The Space Shuttle is an incredible vehicle, the thrust to weight ratio is incredible. When those solid rocket boosters (SRB) light, you jump off the launchpad, like a kick in the pants, an incredible ride. (Video plays of STS-118 lift off) On STS-118, you may have heard of Scott Kelly, I’m sat in the middle as the flight engineer, the Commander is in the left seat, the pilot is in the right seat and then me in the middle as the engineer, or Mission Specialist 1, that was my area of expertise since I’d worked at Mission Control on guidance and navigation. My job was to watch the whole cockpit.

The Commander watches the left side of the cockpit, the pilot the right side and the flight engineer watches both sides. You had to have two sets of eyes. Once the two SRBs fall off, you’re at second stage, it then gets very smooth. You go from pulling 3 Gs to )Gs in 0.5 seconds, its like getting thrown out of your seat. Then everything floats up in to your face. Some of the astronauts get up out of their seats to photograph and video the external tank. They do that because the damage from Columbia accident was foam falling from the external tank, so want to get good documentation and send all those photos and videos back to the ground. Ascent is a very quick 8.5 minutes into orbit.

STS-131 lift off

I was lucky enough to fly on 3 Space Shuttles, STS-106 was Atlantis, STS-118 was Endeavour and STS 131 was Discovery. The Space Shuttle is incredible, I used to get up early morning when I was young and watch the first Space Shuttle launches, it history in the making and I had to see this, little did I know that someday I would be riding on this thing. The most capable spacecraft ever built by anybody. It’ll be a century before we see another spacecraft built like this because everybody is going back to capsules because they’re a little but easier to build. The first reusable spacecraft, 135 missions, the first reusable engines, Space Shuttle engines will be used on the Space Launch System (SLS) that’s going to lift crew members back to the moon in the next few years, using used Space Shuttle main engines. Of course they’ll then splash down in the ocean and we’ll lose them for good.

When you come in on a capsule, where you want to land has to be almost directly in front of you, very little cross range capability. The Space Shuttle had almost a 1000 miles of cross range capability, when you renter the atmosphere, you could turn the vehicle and land at a runway many miles away which extends your landing capability. First vehicle to have a robotic arm, first vehicle to have an airlock and pretty sure the first vehicle to have a toilet, which as an astronaut is kind of an important thing to have.

Ever since the Columbia accident, the Space Shuttle would approach the ISS using an RPM manoeuvre where the Space Shuttle would do a 360 degree pitch in order to expose its belly so astronauts of the ISS can do a photo survey of the tiles on the Space Shuttle. Those picture again are downloaded to the ground to see of there is any damage from the foam. On my second mission, STS-118, they actually did have damage, a big hole in our Space Shuttle. Once we got up there, we would then inspect it with the robotic arm, a detailed inspection using lasers the measure the depth and size of the hole and then send that data down to the ground and they would 3D print models of the damaged foam, put it in the chamber to test it. So while we are up in orbit doing our mission, engineers down on the ground were testing this damaged tile trying to see if we needed a special spacewalk to repair it. I was the lead space walker, prepared to go out and repair so we could all get home safely but it wasn’t needed. They ran enough tests that they were comfortable we could re-enter without any damage. After the Columbia accident, Shuttle damage became a very big issue.

Rick Mastracchio bolting the ISS together

STS-135 in 2011 was the last mission. We still have the ISS, the Space Shuttle was used to build the ISS. The Space Shuttle is like a pick up truck, can take up large pieces of cargo, the crew cab is very small. We’d bring up huge pieces of truss segments, large modules, the robotic arm would grab these modules, take them out of the payload bay and then guys like me would suit up and go outside and bolt together the space station, connect electrical lines etc. I was lucky enough to do that nine times. On STS-118 I did three spacewalks to bolt together parts of the space station, on STS-131 I did 3 others and then when I was up there for my expedition I did 4 more repairs.

The ISS is a fully operational orbiting laboratory, it circles the Earth 16 times a day travelling at 5 miles a second. Its been crewed continually since 2000. We had about 200 experiments going on and I like to categorise them in 3 different ways. The astronauts are the experiment, we’re re taking blood samples, ultrasounds of our eyeballs, trained to do all these things and do science experiments.

The second kind is where we are the operators of the experiments. There was an experiment called BASS – Burning and Suppression of Solids (in Space) where I was in a glove box lighting things on fire on board the ISS. We would change the nitrogen/Oxygen content, burn different samples, video tape it and take pictures and the principal investigator, I would have them on the comms system talking to me directly I was their operator for their experiment. The people coming up with these theories and science experiments for working on these for decades, it was great because of their enthusiasm, and also a lot of pressure because you wanted to do this experiment right and didn’t want to disappoint them.

The third kind is where we really had nothing to do with the experiment. We are the maintenance people of the ISS, maintaining the computers, make sure everything has power etc. These experiments are allowed to run automatically, the alpha magnetic spectrometer which is outside the ISS etc, lots of different experiments going on. Not all of them involved the astronauts. There’s a lot of students running experiments too.

We don’t have a Space Shuttle anymore, so how do we get there now? We fly to Kazakhstan and hitch a ride with the Russians on a Soyuz. The Soyuz rocket has been around since the 60s, the capsule itself was originally designed to go to the moon during the moon race. The Russians are smart folk, they take a capsule, a rocket and adapt to what they want it to do. I felt very comfortable flying on Russian hardware, very well trained. I spent 2 1/2 years training for this mission, spent 52 weeks in Russia and had to learn Russian. If you think it’s hard to do rocket science, try doing it while speaking Russian.

So what’s it like on the inside? It’s a little bit more cramped than the Space Shuttle. Here we are in the capsule, we have a highly complicated G indicator (fluffy toy on string that floats when on zero G). If it point straight down then you are under acceleration or some kind of G forces, once its floating we know we are weightless. A very sophisticated instrument.

It’s a very cramped vehicle, the good news is that we were very lucky in that we were the second or third crew where the Soyuz launches, it usually takes about 2 days because of the trajectory, but they came up with a way to get us there in 6 hours. So when you are cramped up like that, 6 hours is way better than 2 days. We got there from lift off to docking in 6 hours. When I was up there after about 4 months, we were waiting for the next crew to come up and they had planned on a 6 hour arrival time but something happened to one of the engines and had tot change it to 2 days. Psychologically that’s got to do something to you when you were planning to be there in 6 hours.

The Soyuz capsule approaches the ISS, similar to the Space Shuttle but without the RPM manoeuvre. You come in pretty hard in comparison to a Space Shuttle docking. 6 hour after launch, we are docked and attached to the ISS. It’s funny because you get there in 6 hours and then I’m going to be there 6 months. better just take 1 day at a time. Great to have the experience on both vehicles.

We’ve got this incredible ISS up there but what are we doing up there? We’re doing science. All kinds of science, 200 different experiments. Experiments with sphere satellites, programmed by folks on the ground which are controlled by little CO2 canisters, and these satellites are used in many different ways. We have PhD from MIT programming control laws for satellites, then we also use them for students.

We also look at other experiments like bacteria. For some reason, bacteria in orbit is much stronger. We’re trying to work on antibiotics for an E coli bacteria so you would have tunes with bacteria on one side and the antibiotic on the other so you would mix these up and then place in an incubator and then fixate that experiment. We would then take those samples and then send them to the ground so the scientist could then figure what was the most effective.

How do we live up there? We’re up there for 188 days and we work Monday to Friday, Saturday is always cleaning, wipe the cheese broccoli off the ceiling, clean the filters etc and Sunday was our day off. What do you do? You can’t go home so you have to find things to do. Your sleeping back attaches to the wall so you don’t float away in a little personal space about the size of a telephone booth. I had to stretch my sleep bag out at an angle so I don’t have my head up against the ceiling. You can make personal calls to the ground, you’ve got a computer up there, you can tweet! It’s quite comfortable. In Space Shuttle mission you get zero privacy, the seven crew members, you all stretch out on the mid deck.

NASA astronaut Rick-Mastracchio on the ISS exercise treadmill

Exercise is very important up there. We have to exercise about 2 hours a day. We run on a treadmill but you have to use a bungee cord to pull you down to the treadmill. You would run for about 4/5 miles a day and then do resistive exercises lifting weights for an hour a day. You get in really great shape but you are doing that just so you can walk when you get home. Imagine if you laid in bed for 6 months your muscles and bones would deteriorate to the point where you couldn’t walk so you have to exercise. This was a big problem in the early days of Space Stations. Now what we are trying to do is make that even more efficient where we don’t have to spend 2 hours, try and get it down to every other day etc.

There’s a great selection of food up there, a lot of it is MREs, Meals Ready to Eat. Packaged foods with meats and pastas, a lot of freeze-dried food. Fresh food was really hard to come by. When a cargo ship would arrive, the Russians were great about bring up crates of oranges, grapefruits and apples etc. The vehicles on the other hand from the US were not so great at bringing fresh fruit. On one mission we got three rotten oranges and an apple, but the Russians had been doing that for a long time so they knew how to prepare the food and got the timing perfect while the Americans were still trying to work things out. I think sometimes that we had higher priorities than giving our fruit etc like setting up hardware. It’s the greatest place if you want to lose weight though, I had to eat 4/5 meals a day and I was still losing weight. That’s one of the concerns when you are up there so I would supplement that with protein bars which was a really bad habit when I got home.

I was very lucky in that I got to do nine spacewalks. Spacewalks are done for many reasons, most of them in the early days of the Shuttle were going out there to build, to bolt something together. Now that the ISS is fully operational, most of the spacewalks are maintenance. The ISS is huge place that requires a lot of maintenance, changing out hardware that is getting too old, lubricating something, but the most difficult part, the most challenging is preparing for it. It takes days, you have to physically build your suit, check out every tool, tons of procedures, serial numbers to check, check every piece of equipment. They would tell you to use specific wrenches that matches the correct serial number, they are tracking everything, how many time wrench serial No 1 has been used etc.

The suits are very configurable, can be sized to anybody, they have different arm and leg inserts etc. Once you get outside, that’s where the fun starts. You don’t do any walking, it’s all hand over hand, there’s handrails all along the ISS. An EVA is very physically demanding and mentally challenging because you are out there for about 6.5 hours and you can use as much energy doing a spacewalk as you can doing a marathon. Sometimes I did three of these in a week. The most important thing to do on spacewalk is to take a picture. Even more important is that your buddy takes a picture of you. How you don’t do Spacewalks is like how you see in the film ‘Gravity.’ I watched that film the night before I did a spacewalk, I watched it to learn how not to do a spacewalk.

Whats the worst part of spaceflight? Sometimes gravity is your friend, and we actually did a live show here in the UK. We deal with a lot of stress launching off the planet, doing a spacewalk but the most stressful was thing I ever did was trying to describe how to use the toilet in space to a live TV audience during Channel 4 Live from Space. I had to be really careful with my words.

One of the things we got to do up there was receive cargo ships on a regular basis. The ISS takes a lot of maintenance, you can’t go out and get groceries, so cargo ships like Space X, Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft, Progress etc come up. Sometimes it’s like a traffic jam. A Cygnus spacecraft launches on an Antares rocket, not far from where I live now. Once it achieves orbital velocity, it pulls alongside the ISS, the Shuttle and the Soyuz dock, we capture these with the robotic arm and grab them.

Once docked, it normally takes 2 hours to open the hatch. We then pass through the hatch opening, there are always two people doing things, with one reading procedures and looking over your shoulders. You don’t want to have one person doing something critical because if you make a mistake someone could get hurt. They Cygnus spacecraft came up and delivered all kinds of supplies. The one thing it really does well is take away your trash. Think about never being able to empty your trash except once every three or four months and you have to store it in your house. Its going to smell bad and get smaller. The ISS got darker because we were starting to block the lights.

The Cygnus spacecraft is with us for about a month. We finish emptying out, take the science experiments, water, food out etc and then pack it full of trash. We take out the spacecraft with the robotic arm and basically let it go. It slowly drifts away from us, fires a small little engine and it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere and burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere along with all the trash.

We do science!

What do we do for fun? Up there for 188 days. Astronauts work their whole lives trying to get off the planet and whats the first thing you do when you get off the planet? You look back at the planet, its beautiful. I love a night pass of city lights. the aurora borealis, we get fantastic light shows up there, we would sit tin the cupola and watch these green lights in waves come up off the planet. There would be nights when we see the moon rise up through the aurora and then Venus would come shooting up behind. Everything is moving fast up there, you are moving around the Earth pretty quick. When the moon rises, it rises fast.

You see some really incredible things, like over a hurricane. On one of my shuttle mission we were doing an EVA while over the eye of a hurricane on STS-118. We had to land early because a hurricane was heading towards Houston and they were thinking of evacuating the city where Mission Control was. The Earth is an amazing place, you can’t get bored of it. I’ve got ten thousand photographs of the Earth, I’m still amazed at them.

It’s time to come home. The Soyuz spacecraft is pretty simple. You get back in the same Soyuz spacecraft that you came up in, release the clamps, a little spring pushes you gently away, the Soyuz turns away , breaks into 3 pieces with the crew in 1 part and you re-enter the atmosphere in a fireball. The window is a few inches from my shoulder, you can see the ablative heat shield burning off so that you can re-enter safely.

Once in the thicker part of the atmosphere, parachutes start to open. You have one job when reentering on Soyuz, just keep tightening your straps, because when you strap in you are in zero G and its hard to pull yourself down tight. When you start pulling G’s you sink into your seat and your straps are loose. When these parachutes start to open up, you swing around like a shoe in a dryer. Right before you hit the ground, the Soyuz fores soft landing engines. That’s not really a good name for them, should be ‘not so hard landing engines.’ You hit hard but after 6 months in space and after being tossed around like a shoe in a dryer, I thought I’d feel something as I crashed into the Earth but felt perfect, no dizziness, no pain whatsoever. That was until the big Russian technician reached in and grabbed me, pulled me out and threw me down the slide, then I started to feel it.

We did some great things with the Space Shuttle programme, one of the greatest vehicles the world has ever seen. We have the Soyuz spacecraft right now and the ISS. What’s next? NASA is doing a lot of different things, not just NASA, the ESA, but especially Europe and NASA working on the SLS to launch the Orion. The Orion spacecraft will be built o hold 4 people and basically take them to the moon. Powered by the ESA built service module, all pushed into orbit by this new vehicle, the SLS (Space Launch System).

The SLS is a new vehicle similar to the Saturn 5 suing old Space Shuttle technology. 5 segment SRB as opposed to the 4 SRB that the Space Shuttle uses. It will use 4 Space Shuttle main engines as compared to 3 that the Space Shuttle uses. These will be used engines and with big external fuel tanks with hydrogen and oxygen tanks. Supposed to launch a test flight that’s has slipped back to 2019 or later. Maybe the unmanned version will launch in the next two years. After that they launch people beyond LEO.

They’ve taken an Apollo capsule and made it 50% larger so they can fit 4 people in. The Orion capsule itself is only good for 21 days. Obviously if we are going to go beyond the Moon and on to Mars, there’s a lot of other things in support in vehicles that we are going to need to do. There is more than just Orion being built. NASA has a commercial programme going on with Boeing and Space X building new vehicles that will take crew members to the ISS and no longer just have the Soyuz spacecraft to go to the ISS. We can then put a Russian on an US spacecraft and still share the resources.

The plan changes depending on who the politicians are. Gorge W Bush said go to the Moon, he left the White House and we were not allowed to say Moon anymore. President Obama came in and said Mars. Now I think the plan is to go back to the Moon and my personal opinion is that’s the right decision. Mars is very far away and very difficult to land on Mars. We use the atmosphere to enter and slow us down, Mars has 1% of the atmosphere that the Earth has so we can’t utilise that to slow down. ESA is very excited at the thought of the Moon and I think we’ll have folks going around the Moon within 5 years.

Questions from the audience:

Obviously you did a lot of training for the EVAs, how accurately did the training for the EVAs match your experience?

The way I think of training is that its like pieces of a puzzle. You train all these different pieces, you never put the whole mission together until you do the mission. The way we train for spacewalks is several different ways. There’s the big swimming pool, the NBL (Neutral Buoyancy Lab), they put us in the water and make us neutrally buoyant, you don’t float, you don’t sink, you just stay in the water so you now have a 3 dimensional environment. That now becomes a very accurate environment because they will now sink a model of the ISS/Shuttle in the 40 foot deep, 200 foot long and 100 foot wide pool. That’s where you practice but the difference is that you have the drag of the water, if you go nice and slow you don’t feel the drag of the water, but I’m one of those guys who like to go quick, very physically demanding. Also when you flip upside down, when you are on a spacewalk, body position is everything. If you can’t reach something, you flip around. In NBL even though you are neutrally buoyant, imagine if you were upside down, all the blood is rushing to your head, all your body weight is on your shoulders.

The other thing we do is VR which we are starting to do more of. Wear a small backpack called S.A.F.E.R. a little unit so that if you fall off of the ISS and you’re tumbling, the ISS cannot come and get you, you’d have a small hand controller so you could fly yourself back with very limited fuel. It all comes together on the day of your spacewalk. Even with all that training, the first time you get pout that door it’s quite a bit different. one of the things that’s really difficult to simulate is the vacuum of space where you could just go flying across. it takes a lot of orientation so that when somebody goes out that door for the first time, they get 15 minutes of adaptation practice, moving and twisting around so you body can get used to it.

Preparation for a spacewalk training session in the waters of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL)

You said earlier about not getting in the Air Force and the Navy because of your eyesight, does NASA not have a restriction on potential astronauts with sight?

They used to, NASA back in the day when I became an astronaut, NASA had a requirement for eyesight also. I was good enough for NASA but not enough for the Air Force or Navy. But now, young people like you can get all kinds of surgery, and NASA and the military accept that you can get your eyes fixed. The bad news is that they have a bout a thousand other tests you have to pass. I’ve seen people disqualified for colour blindness, depth perception, look at a thousand different parameters on your blood, you can be a very healthy person but if one little parameter is out of whack then you are out. Very tough to get in.

You were lucky enough to fly on Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour, were there any subtle differences between the three and do you have a favourite?

They do have some subtle differences but to the untrained eye it’s almost imperceptible. There’s a few panels and switches that are different. Some of the Shuttles are upgraded differently, one might have GPS, the other might not. I loved them all, as I keep saying I think the Space Shuttle is an incredible vehicle but I have to have a little favouritism for Atlantis as it was my first mission. I have fond memories of first time in orbit, doing crazy astronaut tricks inside it. I’ve seen Endeavour in a museum, I’ve seen Discovery in a museum, I’m yet to see Atlantis, saving the best till last.

Leaving the crazy astronaut tricks till day 2 on Atlantis

When you are weightless, is it similar to when you are on a fairground ride? You go over a bump and feel that nauseous feeling and has anyone ever been sick and who cleans it up?

No one has ever been sick in space! You make it, you clean it! Yes it does feel like that, imagine if you will that you go over that top and that moment where your stomach goes to your mouth, that’s a quick sensation of zero G, probably a little negative zero G, that’s the feeling you have. Imagine you’re in the Space Shuttle with 3G pushing down on you, several hundred pounds of force pushing down on you, you can’t simulate that so you’re feeling that for the first time.

My first mission on launching and all of a sudden, I’m looking real intense at all of these displays and all of a sudden all I can think about is breathing. How come? It’s because I had 3Gs pushing down on my chest and you’ve got to remember to breathe. Then instantly in 1/2 second you go from 3G to zero G and it is weird because now you feel like you are tumbling. Your neural vestibular system is telling your brain all these lies, you feel like you’re falling, a weird sensation till your brain re-calibrates. Some astronauts are very badly affected with one or two people who are really down for about 2 or 3 days with stomach awareness and other issues. I was fairly lucky, a little bit of stomach awareness but the next morning I wake up and feel perfect. I would avoid doing crazy astronaut tricks on day 1.

What was the biggest challenge when you were up there?

It depends on which mission. Every mission is different, we practice every mission in great detail. The biggest challenge on my Shuttle missions were my spacewalks, trying to squeeze in 3 or 4 spacewalks in a period of 8 days. You’re up there moving the suits around, collecting hardware, prepping all the things for the spacewalk and then you go out and do the spacewalk. You come back in and instantly start charging batteries, getting the suits cleaned up, replenishing the consumables so the day after next you can get outside and do it again. You’re reviewing procedures, robotic arms, have to be well integrated with everybody on the ground, robotic arm operators, who is going to suit you up. Just getting all those things done without making a mistake that’s going to hurt somebody, that’s the biggest challenge.

The expedition when I went through the hatch on day 1 of 188, the biggest challenge was don’t think about day 188. Just take it 1 day at a time, it really didn’t bother me that I would be there for 188 days, it just seemed so far away. the mission was great and the challenge there was maintaining focus because you do get fatigued after a while so you have to be careful you don’t do something wrong etc.

They keep talking about decommissioning the ISS, what will they do when that happens?

There’s a couple of things going on right now. All the international partners get together and have agreed to keep the Space Station on till 2024, and they’re going to get together again and may move that to 2026, 2028, who knows what. I heard some talk of 2028. Now you’ve got the President of the US who says shut it down in 2024. Several things can happen to it. if there is somebody out there like the Russians or other International Partners want to keep it going, they might want to come to some kind of agreement where the US gets out of it and other countries can continue, that’s possible but probably unlikely.

The most likely thing is de-orbit it, just like the Mir Space Station was de-orbited. We would send up some kind of vehicle like a Progress vehicle to de-orbit and bring it down into the Atlantic of Pacific ocean. That would be a terrible waster but everything that is built has a lifetime and the ISS probably already has had half its lifetime but the good news is that is has a lot of spare parts up there from before the Space Shuttle programme ended. We brought up stacks of spare parts so the ISS is very well stocked right now. That’s why they can still go up there right now and do maintenance. The problem is like if you are building a new house and you have an old house, it’s kind of hard to afford two houses and that’s what happens when you have NASA or an agency is trying to launch a new programme, the old programmes have to be shut down to use that money for other things.

How much was your ticket on the Soyuz?

I had a coupon for that so I got a little bit off. I don’t know the exact price but they didn’t take it out of my pay cheque thankfully. The Russians have a monopoly on the market so they were always raising the price. I think I was in a $50 million range for my seat to the ISS on board the Soyuz. That’s why the US is building capsules and anxious to get them in orbit. There’s a lot of bartering going on between the countries on the ISS.

Expedition 38 launch

How much of a problem is space garbage?

Orbital debris is a major issue. I worked the Orion programme before I left NASA for many years off and on and the number 1 risk to the loss of crew was orbital debris. When you look at the risks, all the others are little, it’s a self-induced issue, if you will, its like a protective shield we’ve built around the planet and the ISS is a problem also. Many times I was out on spacewalks and I would see what I call bullet holes on the side of the space station. Luckily they weren’t in a pressurised module but I would see pieces of the truss where there was something like the size of the pinky of your finger where the metal was all flayed out. That’s where I cut my glove on STS-118 when out on a spacewalk. I probably slipped or grabbed a piece of material or metal that was cut open by orbital debris.

I came back on a Space Shuttle mission and we had a hole in our radiator panel. These are used to cool the Space Shuttle down and they are full of tubes but the orbital debris was right between the tubes. If it had it one of the tubes, we’d have lost a lot of our cooling system and would have had to do an emergency deorbit, so we were a fraction of an inch from having to abort the mission. It doesn’t take a big piece of orbital debris, the big pieces we know where they are, the little pieces we can protect for but the bits between the big and the little that are big enough to hurt you are too small to follow and track. And when the Chinese blew up their satellite, that doubled the issue and made much worse.

Rick Mastracchio spacewalk during STS-118

Most of the Space Shuttle launches seem to happen on a Thursday, is there a particular reason why?

Yes, we launch on a Thursday because we don’t want to work the weekend, we’re lazy. A Space Shuttle launch countdown starts about 4 days before launch. We start the countdown on a Monday morning, shoot for launch on Thursday and go home on Friday! But how many times did that work out? Probably 50% at best!

When you landed in the Shuttle and you had the potential damage on the heat shield, did you pop outside and have a look?

Yes we all did, looked up at it, it was perfect and pristine, there wasn’t much charring around it, no burning. The folks on the ground did a fantastic job. As you can imagine, my wife, all our spouses were, we’re up in orbit doing our job, we may have a hole in our vehicle but the ground is taking care of it. We were not worried, we were just doing our job, we still had a full job to do.

Meanwhile our spouses down on the planet, on the news every night about a damaged Shuttle, we don’t see any of that, but we don’t know that our spouses down on the planet are probably sick to their stomach listening to all this stuff. John Shannon was the Space Shuttle Programme Director, he just did such a great job talking to the families. We analysed it, we tested it, we were 100% confident that is was going to be safe and take care of it and they were right. Spaceflight is a team sport, you’ve got ground controllers, your crew mates on the Shuttle, you’ve got the engineers who put the vehicle together and you have to rely on your team members to do their job and you do your job, if you try to do everybody’s job then nothing works.

Having gone through NASA as an engineer and a flight controller I trust them 100% to do the right thing. Somebody made a 3D model of it that was a little smaller than my fist. It want all the way through, it was just a big chunk of the tile ripped out. i think about ‘what if.’ I was the guy who would have to go out and fix it, I was the guy who 7 lives on the whole Space Shuttle programme, the whole Space Station was going to depend on, that would have been on my mind. I would have been less worried about me dying and more worried about letting the team down.

Ant Forage Habitat Facility which will study ant behaviour and colonisation in microgravity

What was your favourite experiment that you did in Space?

My favourite experiment. One of them was playing withe the little satellites, but the one that was fun was the same Cygnus spacecraft that came up delivered some ants. Basically a little container where you could see them and they would all path in one little area, we’d put a HD camera in front of them and open up a little container where they went to this bigger area where the ants could walk around go looking for food. It was an experiment and it was educational. All the schools were watching to see how the ants reacted in zero G. We kept opening up more and more chambers for the ants to walk around. Scientists were also viewing this trying to analyse how ants go out and forage. You know how if you drop a piece of sugar, eventually an ant find it and you think heck, how did the ant find that? The way it was explained to me was that they were coming up with a process to figure this out. Imagine if someone goes off in the wood and you programme a bunch of drones and just let these drones go, eventually they’re going to find this person lost in the woods. Educational and scientific watching ants walk around in space.

Have you had a particularly terrifying or scary experience apart from the whole of normal spaceflight?

Usually my fellow crew members would scare me a little bit. I get that question a lot and it’s a hard one to answer because I don’t really get scared, you tend to worry about things, you know, I’ve got a spacewalk tomorrow, that can be hard to sleep and you’re anxious about doing it because there’s a lot of work to do. Again it comes down to preparation and what you’re comfortable with and we prepared in training so much. In Space Shuttle mission we trained for a year and you practice in the NBL, we used to practice a 5:1 or 7:1 ratio so in other words for every spacewalk we did, we’d do it 5 times in the swimming pool. Every ascent, we would practice hundreds of ascents and they would give us 10 to 15 failures for an ascent and in a real mission you might get 1 if it was a really bad day. You are so over prepared, astronauts are the most highly trained people in the world.

When I tore my glove, they told me to hurry up and go inside the airlock, I was like “What! I’ve got work to do, I haven’t got time for this!” I wasn’t scared, I was a little embarrassed I tore my glove, I kind of blame myself. It was the third spacewalk of the mission, and I was just beating my gloves up on the first two spacewalks and on the third spacewalk I should have said that I would use my other pair of gloves but I had nice pristine gloves, I wanted to keep them pristine. They were so worn out from the other two EVAs that eventually they got ripped. I didn’t get nervous. You know you’re vehicle, you know your systems so well, you know exactly when you’re in danger and when you are not.

A huge thanks to Space Lectures for another great visit and to Proffoto for a great pic. Looking forward to the next one!

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/astronaut-rick-mastracchio/feed/06022Czech out the Top Picks of Praguehttp://www.nickcook.net/top-picks-prague/
http://www.nickcook.net/top-picks-prague/#respondSat, 10 Feb 2018 18:26:09 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=6105Under siege. That’s how I would class any visit to Prague. A city of a hundred spires and home to amazing Gothic architecture untouched by the grubby hands of Communist block buildings…

]]>Under siege. That’s how I would class any visit to Prague. A city of a hundred spires and home to amazing Gothic architecture untouched by the grubby hands of Communist block buildings and now under siege from stag do’s and tirades of tourists. According to most people we know, we were probably the only people on the planet who have not already visited. So in case there are any other hermits hiding under rocks and do want to go, Czech out the top picks of Prague.

Old Town Square

In some kind of twisted tradition, every major attraction we end up visiting (Trevi Fountain in Rome especially) seems to always have scaffolding draped over it. In this case, we made our way top the cultural capital of Prague’s old town square to see the Teutonic decadence of the astronomical clock. Completely covered and under repair. The streets around are of a forgotten age and much better explored.

The Charles Bridge

A pick pockets dream destination as you fight your way through the crown to the other side. Instead, head up the 14th century old town bridge tower for a sweeping view of Prague.

Prague Castle

We enjoyed a slow walk around Prague castle taking in Golden Lane, St George’s Basilica and St Vitus Cathedral which dominates the high point. We were lucky enough to hear the tannoy alert system blaring out as though “air attack red” was underway as we were walking up the castle area. Straight out of the 80’s Cold War era but minus the wave of cold war bombers.

Admire the Art

I’m not quite sure I’d call the John Lennon Wall art, but there will be approximately one million people trying to Instagram the shit out of it while trying to look like they’ve just stepped off the cover from an 80’s album. Yes, someone with a guitar will rock up and play The Beatles. The Crawling Babies are freakishly huge with a slot for a face and will have kids climbing all over them. The Hanging Man is Sigmund Freud hanging on by one hand, probably fed up with the boozy Brit brigade. The Head of Franz Kafka has a mesmerising quality to it as it rotates through but not nearly as much as the controversial statue called ‘Piss’ which has two men taking a piss on the shape of the Czech Republic.

Beer

The Czech’s are the biggest beer drinkers in the world and you can get pretty pissed in Prague quite cheaply with conclusive proof that 20 pints the night before is great for a hangover the next morning. Hell, you can even have your beer delivered by train and I have absolutely no shame in admitting we ordered more drinks just for the kick of it, lost track of how many we had. Choo choo cheers I guess. The bottom of a beer glass is not the only sight though.

St Wenceslas Square

The half mile long 14th century St Wenceslas square, named as in the good king who looked out on the Feast of Stephen as the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even. Though I suspect he lounged around to gawk at the improbable number of shops, strip clubs, hookers and hotels that adorn the place before giving alms to the poor.

The Prague Sex Machines Museum

There is a whole separate post on that here. It might make your eyes water though. Some of those items might look like they’ve been stolen from a back alley sex shop, not that I’ve been in one…

In summary, Prague has been lovely but we’ve probably made too many comparisons with Budapest which we thought was just as pretty and cheaper. Not that Prague has been expensive, you can eat cheaply or expensively and we paid beer prices from 35 to 79 CZK, which is a good job because Mrs Cook can knock the booze back better than anyone I know.

Another top pick of Prague has to be the transport system, it’s a breeze and far from the unfriendliness of the UK. When you land, go to the yellow kiosk at the airport and buy a ticket for 80 minutes of travel costing 32 CZK which is £1.12! (you can pay by contactless card). Prepared to be squeezed on the 119 bus to the last stop which is the metro station at Nádraží Veleslavín and hop on the green metro A line to Staroměstská (Old Town Square). Prague has a very easy to use, cheap, efficient, reliable public transport system (take note UK government). An Uber back to the airport only cost us £11.

]]>You read that right, Prague has a sex machines museum. How nice of Prague to name a museum after me, sex machine is my middle name. The saucy shenanigans and coitus contraptions for sexual stimulation are enough to make your eyes water and certainly enough creative copulation contraptions of salacious sin to make even Ann Summers blush.

The erotic establishment just off Prague’s old town square is a collection of over 320 deviant devices, electrical erotica, mechanical masturbation machines from drill powered dildos to steam powered penis pumps. It’s another example of the weird and wacky and reminds me of the curious cock collection of the Icelandic Phallological Museum.

Size matters, which is why the owner has spent many years curating a collection covering 3 floors of filthy paraphernalia and ludicrous lovesticks. All manner of medieval mischief, Victorian vice, electro rumpy-pumpy, BDSM ball breakers, sex racks, love chairs and fetish face pieces await inside for you and your mischievous mistress viewing pleasure. Though these days its more likely to be a pixelated porn webmistress.

Complete with a old time peep show cinema or old erotic film, the Prague Sex Machines Museum is not everyone’s cup of tea, but at only 250 CZK, it’s worth a splurt.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/prague-sex-machines-museum/feed/26158Splat! Throwdown on the Potter’s Wheelhttp://www.nickcook.net/throwdown-potters-wheel/
http://www.nickcook.net/throwdown-potters-wheel/#commentsThu, 18 Jan 2018 22:18:21 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=4813Much to Mrs Cook’s disappointment, I’m not very good with my hands, so we’ve come to get some instruction. Except this time I’ll also be getting them wet and dirty at a…

]]>Much to Mrs Cook’s disappointment, I’m not very good with my hands, so we’ve come to get some instruction. Except this time I’ll also be getting them wet and dirty at a potter’s wheel.

The clay chucking instructions are provided, along with tea and coffee, from the lovely Graeme and Inga at Parkwood Pottery. This is not quite the great pottery throw down, it’s a 3 hour taster session for beginners. No, we are not recreating a scene from Ghost. I’m not exactly Patrick Swayzee and she’s not Demi Moore but I am hoping to handle some lovely jugs though its more likely to be love handles in my case.

Sam at the potter’s wheel

There’s no messing about, and after a quick demonstration its hands on and mucking in, and it does get mucky. With a forceful throw of some moist clay onto the potter’s wheel, we start to centre our clay. I was hoping to model something that vaguely resembled a plate, pitcher or pint, except on my first go I unconsciously managed to make a pot shaped like a phallic symbol.

Throwdown on a potter’s wheel

The hands of a master craftsman make this look easy and I was starting to sweat I might not be able to form anything, which would have been a first for Parkwood Pottery. Finally after repeated attempts and interspersed with some instruction on techniques, I managed to make the world smallest flower vase. It is the finest flower vase I have ever made and possibly the best in the whole of creation. Meanwhile, my wife on another Potter’s Wheel makes the perfect razor thin bowl while I barely hold my jealousy.

Festooned with a number of tools to work with, I’ve been assured that the sponge on a stick is a diddler, although to me it looks like a roman shufty stick they used to wipe their bums with. This diddler is used to wipe away water and moisture from inside your pot. Same thing I guess.

Our 4 pieces to be fired and glazed with Sam’s bowls on the left and my “olive” bowl and plate on the right.

3 hours passed by in a whirl, its quite relaxing, and feeling that triumphant with the latest creations I decide to ditch the finest flower vase in all of creation and settle on having an olive bowl and small salad plate to be fired and glazed while Sam selects her near perfect bowls. If anyone asks, the olive bowl and small salad plate are by design… if you come to the house, you will be served food in these dishes whether you want it or not so you can marvel at the craftmasnhip.

We can absolutely recommend a throwdown on a potter’s wheel, it’s £30 and 3 hours well spent.

]]>http://www.nickcook.net/throwdown-potters-wheel/feed/14813Segway Speed Demons in the Snow at Sherwood Foresthttp://www.nickcook.net/segway-sherwood-forest/
http://www.nickcook.net/segway-sherwood-forest/#respondSun, 10 Dec 2017 19:03:50 +0000http://www.nickcook.net/?p=5723They say that electric vehicles are the future so we’ve come to find out with a sedate Segway adventure in Sherwood Forest. To call it a Segway safari would be a bit of…

]]>They say that electric vehicles are the future so we’ve come to find out with a sedate Segway adventure in Sherwood Forest. To call it a Segway safari would be a bit of a stretch, for a start, the conditions are not exactly the African plains, nor are there any of the big 5. This is the (Nottingham) shire, and it’s snowing.

First impressions, I can’t say I’m convinced, but certainly more convincing than Zorbing. While electric vehicles are supposed to be already cheaper to run than petrol or electric cars, I just can’t see the Segway jockeying for position in the Mad Max style battle for road dominance in bumper to bumper traffic on Nottingham’s very own Fury road, or Ring Road as it’s more commonly known. I’m not sure if the Segway is going to go the same way as the Sinclair C5.

You can’t ride it on the road and you can’t drive it on the pavement, you can drive it off-road although that may not always be recommended. The owner of Segway died tragically when he drove his Segway off the edge of a cliff into the river. At this point I would have expected sales to have errr… dropped off the edge off a cliff. We find ourselves in relative safety deep in Sherwood Forest in our home county of Nottinghamshire, unless we get robbed, or upended by some particularly looking vicious tree roots that could trip us up.

Finally after being bubble wrapped in health and safety, dressed like a stuntman in crash protection gear and signing a waiver suggesting this was a highly hazardous activity rivaling that of climbing mounting Everest, we were finally given a crash course on a Segway. It really was a crash course for some.

Pushing our way to the front, we became the Segway speed demons in the snow, zipping through the snow at 7 mph on our all terrain Segways through a snowy forest scene, riding roughshod over a frozen forest floor and violently over blades of grass that dared to look at us in the wrong way. At one point, I felt that their was an unspoken race on. In this dog-eat-dog world I seriously entertained the idea of letting down the wheels on other people’s Segways. The snow did its best to slip the Segways up. Beware the Segway speed demons in the snow at Sherwood Forest….

Not being the most graceful person on the planet, clumsiness is a skill that comes with ease, so a tumble was a distinct possibility. Surprisingly, a trip to A&E was not a mandatory requirement although Sam did her best to get her crashes out of the way at the beginning. I left mine till the very end, with dignity nearly intact. As dignified as you can get riding a Segway anyway.